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Articles

Traffic Lights – A Modest Proposal

Nicholas Denyer shows how to improve traffic management by applying some ideas about induction and following rules.

The Highway Code allows you to proceed when the lights are green, and requires you to stop when they are red. The rule sounds simple enough. But it leads to lots of complexities. Having this rule means that our traffic lights must be very elaborate. They need elaborate mechanisms to change from red to green and back again; and they need even more elaborate mechanisms to ensure that those changes of colour are properly coordinated.

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